Paul's letters to the Corinthians reflect the situation in a church that's strong and growing, but still learning how to be Christian. In this first chapter he compliments them on their faith, tells them off for quarrelling, and bases every...

The opening verses of this chapter are a touching admission of Paul's lack of self-confidence as a preacher and evangelist when he came to Corinth: 'I was weak and trembled all over with fear', he says (verse 3). But while he had no co...

Corinth had a reputation as a particularly immoral place, but by Paul's time this was largely historical and it would have been no worse than any other port city. It seems (verse 1) that a man had married or was sleeping with his stepmother, a p...

‘I’m a season-ticket holder at West Bromwich Albion. We sing The Lord’s my shepherd whenever Albion score a goal.’

‘We were flying on holiday. There was a storm. People were praying all around me.’

Everyone knows about the five loaves and two fish that miraculously became enough to feed a whole crowd. With slight variations, the story appears in all four Gospels. Like many others, it has Old Testament roots: Elisha does the same sort of thing i...

The Pharisees were devoted to serving God through keeping his law. We should be careful about saying they believed they could ‘earn their way to heaven’ – it wasn’t really like that – but keeping the rules could become a mark of someone’s...

Until now in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has been doing well against the opposition he faced. Now, the forces of darkness are beginning to gather against him, and he starts to prepare his disciples for what lies ahead. They don’t like it; they have s...

After having spent some time with Jesus, the disciples must have thought they had a pretty good idea of what he was about, until at the drop of a hat he began to talk about suffering and dying. Peter voiced what everyone else was thinking: the Messia...

Matthew 18 contains some hard Jesus sayings: on pride, temptation and the wages of sin. And yet, read these passages closely and there’s always an underlying vision of deliverance.

In today’s passage Matthew places a brief, seemingly innocuous, scene between the weighty topics of marriage and money. The peaceful image of Jesus’ hands resting on the heads of children seems strangely out of place. Yet, all three passages hang...

Three successive passages in Matthew 20, expose the human desire to be important and respected. Hard-working people moan about the boss’s favouritism towards part-timers. Angry young men’s daydreams of booting out the Roman overlords unravel as t...

The Old Testament prophet Zechariah had spoken of a day when the Messiah would arrive, not on a warhorse but a donkey. The people who cheered for Jesus as he entered Jerusalem had spent their entire lives under Roman rule. They couldn’t wait for th...

After the ‘Little Apocalypse’ of chapters 24 and 25, Matthew’s story rushes headlong into the final days of Jesus’ life. There’s a succession of incidents and encounters, each of which we could dwell on slowly and prayerfully.

Gideon's story doesn't have a happy ending. A mopping-up operation sees disgruntled Israelites placated, unco-operative Israelites punished and captured Midianite leaders executed. Gideon acts wisely and – given the times he lived in – ...

The 1647 Westminster Confession defines God as being 'without body, parts or passions', but that's more of a philosophical statement. In the Hebrew Bible he is very passionate indeed: loving, sad, angry, regretful, and sometimes downri...

Jude’s letter is an urgent call to fight for and defend the true faith. He thought he had cause to rejoice with a faithful community of believers but, to his horror, he finds they’re not only in crisis but seemingly unaware of the fact.

It can be very hard for us to read some of the Old Testament stories of violence and conquest with their overtones of genocide and ethnic cleansing. We need to remind ourselves constantly that Deuteronomy was written a long time ago, and look for the...

God has rescued the people from Egypt and guided them through the wilderness to the Promised Land, but there's a problem: the Israelites' descendants wouldn't have direct experience of God's saving work (verse 2). They would just ...

The book of Isaiah is full of foreshadowings of Jesus. Chapter 40 marks the beginning of a new section which may have been written by a different author; most scholars don't think the book was written by one person, though they all stress its ar...